“Apparently there are tons of Chinese people in the USA who go back and forth to Wuhan all the frikkin’ time.”
It’s a huge city, and back then you could fly to China from US hubs for under $500 round trip (including bags, meals, and beer/wine). Made sense that people did just that. What didn’t make sense is that no one in power seemed to know that was going on, or they didn’t think that people with non-slanty eyes could get the virus. They were wrong.
And when Trump did invoke the Travel ban they called him a racist. In fact if memory serves a Judge blocked the order and some Iranians got into NY during appeal.